The kids played the claw machine today in downtown Whitehorse, Yukon. When I saw Andrea getting her $5 changed into tokens, I thought it was a total waste of money. Andrea’s $5 gave them each five tries to capture a stuffy. By some fluke of nature, my daughter Nesslin actually succeeded on her third try.
The two of them used up the rest of the tokens and, of course, Ian had nothing. He begged and cried for just one more go but we were insistent that there was no way we were dropping more cash on this thing. The kind little old lady who was running the machine volunteered one last token for Ian. I just shook my head thinking we’re only delaying the inevitable. I gave him a pep-talk that if he doesn’t win, that he’s going to accept the loss and move on.
Quite a few people had gathered around watching as Ian went for it, then a Christmas miracle happened. The crowd cheered as he dropped the exact stuffy he had been going for the whole time. The lady who gave him the token gave him a big hug and I have to admit, I was wrong: that $5 was money well spent.
Yesterday, our six year old daughter along with our four year old son went on an adventure they had arranged for themselves.
My wife had just given them an old digital camera and they shot a few selfies with it. They also got new backpacks which they were quite excited about.
My sneaky kids excited about their (new to them) digital camera just before they went AWOL.
As I was getting ready for work I noticed they were up to something by the way they were whispering to each other with their new backpacks on and then kept quiet as I passed by them. I told them whatever they were up to, to cut it out and I headed out the door. I got a text from Andrea about a 10 minutes later on my commute to work:
The kids are just wandering around the neighbourhood somewhere. I’m about to get on my bike to go find them. I caught them at the corner walking away from our house with their backpacks on and yelled at them to come home and have breakfast now and they just kept walking like I didn’t even say anything. And they heard me because they turned around and looked at me while I was saying come home right now for breakfast
After contacting friends and neighbours and talking to everyone she ran into looking for them she even contacted the police to keep an eye out for them. I was getting updates by text and it was pretty stressful — even my co-workers who I was keeping updated about the search were bothered. I got a text an hour and a half later that our friend Chelsea found Nesslin (still in her pajamas) walking alone heading back to the house about two blocks from home. It turns out they had decided Nesslin would walk Ian to preschool (about 2km away) without parent permission or notification. They knew the way from the many times that Andrea had taken them by bike in the Chariot bike wagon.
I was annoyed that the preschool didn’t call immediately when they arrived. Ian’s preschool teacher claims that when Ian arrived at school she asked him where his mom was to sign him in and he told her that she was in the parking lot and said you [the teacher] would sign him in yourself. Sounds pretty conniving and atypical of my son to say the least.
Ian claims that’s not what he said because he was actually excited to tell the teacher that they had walked by themselves. My co-worker thinks I’m silly to believe my son over his teacher but I know what he’s like and he was pretty annoyed that his story and her story didn’t line up. When I asked him if he had been worried about getting in trouble as he walked to school he said they talked about that but decided that their teacher would be proud of them for walking on their own. I don’t want to accuse they teacher of anything but I am still annoyed that I will probably never know for sure.
The kids knew that their mom would be mad but they were surprised at the lecture they got from me when I got home from work. We are strickly a no hitting family but I told them that a co-worker of mine suggested I give them each a spanking for what they did. I was relieved to see them take this suggestion really hard and as they both broke into tears, I felt like the message was well received.
We went tent camping last weekend. Our friends Duane, Chelsea, and family were sleeping in their new (to them) trailer and our other friend Wren and her daughters slept in their car. Cold weather and a new air mattress that needed to be refilled once every two to three hours meant that our sleep was pretty disrupted. That morning Ian woke up crying… or more like whining. At the same time, Wren’s daughter Kate opened her car door which made a screeching noise exactly like the sound Ian was making. He stopped abruptly, yelled out angrily, “Stop copying me!” and looked around to see who was mocking him. I told him that was just the car door closing and Kate yelled out, “Sorry Ian.” Luckily he took it in stride and laughed along with all of us.
Later that morning we were talking about how we slept. Duane said, pointing to his trailer, you’ve got to get one of these, they’re great. I said sarcastically “Oh, were you not freezing cold all night?” referring to our own sleep in the tent. He said, “Actually, at one point it was almost too hot”.
I guess we still had fun because we’ve decided to do it again in a couple weeks.
My great-grandmother was Sarah Ellen Kinsman (AKA Ella Milner). Growing up, I didn’t know much about her except that her father Marshall Kinsman died in a logging accident and her mother remarried Joseph Young, Brigham Young’s older brother. Even my dad was too young to know my Great Grandma Milner — she died a year before he was born. I also remember hearing that Ella’s mother was born on the day of the Hauns Mill Massacre but I could never keep track of which relative these stories were about. Really the only thing I remember from my childhood about my great-grandmother was just that we would often visit her gravesite on our trips to Raymond, AB, so learning more about her has been really interesting.
I’m sharing her story for posterity as part of my collection of family posts. If you find this information useful please send me a note, I’d love to hear from you.
SARAH ELLEN KINSMAN, daughter of Marshall Corridon Kinsman and Sarah Jane Snow, was born 19 May 1857, at Provo, Utah. She died 25 May 1943, in Salt Lake City, Utah at the age of 86. She married Benjamin Franklin Milner on 9 June 1886, at Logan, Cache, Utah in the Logan Temple.
Sarah Kinsmen (AKA Ella Milner) — colour added by Jeff Milner 2023 in Photoshop
I came across this post about a men’s world record setting high dive and it reminded me about my mom’s first-cousin, Lucy Wardle Streeter, who in 1985 set the women’s record for high diving and still holds the Guinness record today.
In 1985, Rancho Palos Verdes resident Lucy Wardle Streeter climbed the ladder of a swaying, 120-foot steel tower, built to her specifications at the edge of a pool in Ocean Park, a marine mammal amusement park in Hong Kong.
At the top of the tower, she stepped onto a platform barely as wide as her stance, and stood with arms outstretched, for 10 seconds. Then she lept, and executed a beautifully arched, backward flip. Three seconds later she entered the water at 71 miles an hour, knocking the wind out of herself.
According to the 2022 Guinness Book of World Records, the 120-foot, 9-inch [36.8m] dive remains the highest dive ever performed by a woman.
I met Lucy once while on a family vacation to Los Angeles. I remember seeing her world record certificate and a photo of her on the platform. Just today I discovered a video of the record breaking dive on YouTube:
Wardle’s dive of 120 feet 9 inches bettered the record of 109-4 set by another American, Debi Boccia, in Rome in 1982.
I’ve been restoring and colourizing some old black and white family photos in Photoshop lately. Here are some of my favourites:
My grandpa Milner and his basketball team. Circa 1922.My great grandpa Frank Milner. Unknown date.My mom in about grade 4. Circa 1962.My aunts and uncles and Milner grandparents before my dad was born. Circa 1943.My grandma and grandpa Scoville on their wedding day. Circa 1942
My great grandfather, Benjamin Franklin “Frank” Milner is buried beside his wife Ella in the Temple Hill Cemetery1 near Raymond, Ab. I remember we’d always take the time to check out his gravestone whenever we visited there but even my dad is too young to have known Frank, since my dad was born 18 years after he died. It’s not surprising though because my Great Grandpa Milner was really old. For some perspective, he was born seven years before the start of the American Civil War and another full 40 years before Utah achieved statehood.
I don’t know too much about Frank except what I’ve read in the excerpt below from p.196-198 of Valiant in the Faith, with spelling corrections, notes, and links added by me.
My grandpa Marshall used to jokingly call it Boot Hill. Boot Hill is the name or nickname of many cemeteries in the old west with reputations for the number of men that died with their boots on (presumably involving gun play or hangings). The Raymond cemetary was called Temple Hill because of the hope and plans by the folks in Raymond to have the first latter-day saint temple built there—ultimately the Alberta Temple got built in Cardston much to the multigenerational disappointment of the locals in Raymond. I guess a cemetery is the next best thing?[↩]
Valiant in the Faith – Gardner and Sarah Snow and Their Family by Archibald F. Bennett and Ella M. Bennett is a book of genealogy and stories about descendants of the Gardner Snow family of which I am one.
I’ve learned a few interesting things about the book. The author, Ella M. Bennett, it turns out, is actually my dad’s aunt. The other author, her husband Archibald Bennett, is a semi-famous genealogist. He happens to have worked as a school teacher at a couple of the same schools as me (Taber and Barnwell). My dad tells me they never finished the book while they were alive and it was their kids that did a lot of work completing it.
An interesting story shared in the book is that my Great Great Grandmother, Sarah Jane Snow, was born on the day of the Haun’s Mill massacre.
After dabbling into my family’s genealogy, I learned that my Grandpa Marshall Milner was first cousins with former Governor of California, Goodwin Knight.(Which means he and I are first cousins 2 times removed.))
Goodwin is the grandson of John Brewitt Milner and Ester Elizabeth Yardley Thurman. (John B. Milner was the first Milner in my family to immigrate to the American continent.) his parents were Lillie (Milner) Knight and Jesse Knight. Jesse was the nephew of the mining magnate Jesse Knight who founded the town of Raymond, Ab.
My dad told me a story about how one time his parents, Marshall and Sarah travelled to California to visit their daughter Joyce who was on a church mission. It was at this time that Goodwin was the governor of California. They found themselves not far from the governor’s mansion and Marshall having never met Goodwin, wanted to knock on his cousin’s door. However, my grandma insisted that the governor was too busy and that it would be a bother to disturb him. They never did meet and everyone agrees, it’s really too bad.
Here is Goodwin at the opening of Disneyland in 1955.
Here he is again speaking after Walt just gave his opening speech. He has a look that reminds me of my Grandpa Marshall:
When it comes to Goodwin Knight, however, possibly more interesting to most is the fact that he was closely involved in the Warren Commission, officially titled The President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy. The Commission took its unofficial name—the Warren Commission—from its chairman, Chief Justice Earl Warren, whom Goodwin served under as the 35th Lieutenant Governor of California in the years before he became the Governor himself.
My sister and two of her kids were in Los Angeles over the weekend to watch the Premier Lacrosse League All Star Game. After picking up her rental car, first thing they did was hit up Venice Beach near Santa Monica pier. She was having a good time with her boys when four helicopters (at least one police) showed up, and surrounded what she described as a scary clown guy that had been in a slow-speed police pursuit. Although he attracted a crowd, my sister said it was frightening and she wanted nothing to do with the action. It took a while but eventually an officer followed the man onto the beach, waited for more officers to arrive and they arrested the man.
